Diversity of irresponsibilities

There is no instance of groenlinks that does not need reform and improvement. That we know for sure. We also know that some attempts at change are more successful than others. So it is reasonable to expect that now and then people force the rules, whatever they might be. And sure, this is what happened few days ago. A undercover dissident In Noord Holland considered that preventing Herman Meijer from being senator was more important than Groenlinks having five senators. And at the same time, the three members of Zuid Holland choose, in my opinion also to prevent senator Herman, to support Jan Laurier.

In different levels, both actions are irresponsible. Of course, those four members of groenlinks have all possible rights to want to prevent another member of groenlinks to become a senate member. But the four persons broke -at least- the internal rules of groenlinks. And besides the rules discussion, I think it is irresponsible to act outside the congress, which in principle is the place in which any action against one or another candidate should have taken place. Actually, I think it is pretty silly to act after the congress. Before, and along, you get quite some chances to influence the voting. But after... when the decision is taken... feels too much like bad losers behaviour.

Now, I have a weakness for the Zuid Holland people. Even if their argument is very weak, it is still an argument given by persons to whom we can still talk. And it did not cost political weight to the party. So I would call them, at least up to today, mild irresponsibles. Mild because even if we can not change their vote, we can discuss it, and they are there, open to evaluation by the party.

I have less of a weakness for the secret Noord Hollander. His, or her, action costs a lot to our party. One seat, 20% of our political capital, is far too much to justify a personal political vendetta, at least in my opinion. And even worse, he or she remains hidden. So it is not even the case as with the Zuid Hollanders. I consider this secret agent quite irresponsible.

But enough for the dissenters. Lets talk a bit about the other side. The side that in my eyes is also quite irresponsible.

In first place I wonder about Harry Borghouts. Was it really needed to tell the public that the null vote was not only null, but also on purpose? Did this not give the secret agent all what he/she wanted?

In second place, I wonder about the people that calls right away for a royament. It seems to me that they did not learn anything from the experience of Sam Pormes vs Herman Meijer. A royament is not something that is called just like that. It can be taken back, it cost time, commissions, discussions, grief... And it has a long tail of consequences. Actually I am convinced that the four votes that we are talking about now are greatly influenced by that flawed attempt to kick Sam Pormes out of the party.

So that is why I consider pretty irresponsible today to start calling for royaments. Because punishment is expensive, and some times it kicks back. So... why should we be talking about punishment so fast?

To close these lines, consider this: No matter what is your opinion on these four votes, they are just another indication that we have a party that has serious internal dissent. To punish the people that make this obvious might be cathartic, but ultimately useless. A party that stays together under the fear of breaking rules is not interesting. And a party with un-public political operators neither. Today both sides of groenlinks accuse the other of being un-open. It would be time to look at our own eyes, that have enough own planks of wood... instead of keep on wailing about the specks of sawdust that are in other's...

Why to disagree with Chavez...

...agreeing with the closure of a TV sender

All around the world the media complains about the last move from Chavez, the president of Venezuela. He decided not to renew the permission to broadcasting of a traditional TV sender, Radio Caracas Television (RCTV). The sender, strongly anchored in the venezuelan public, has been extremely critical of the Chavez government. So, is this just another show of the antidemocratic Chavez? well, yes and no.

The start of this problem can be traced to an unsuccessful coup de etat attempted against Chavez a couple of years ago. Chavez was out of power for couple of days, but made an impressive comeback (depending of whom tell the history due to massive protests, or due to the disarray of the putchists themselves). In any case, along the crucial moments of the coup, the private television channels agreed in not showing any news whatsoever. People was left with old movies in the screen. Eventually the senders supported the new government... to their big regret, since Chavez was back in power soon enough.

The relevant question is if this action is enough to close a TV sender few years later. We could argue about many details, of course. But before, just a simple question. Imagine that Fortuin would have managed to become prime minister. Imagine that couple of years later, say in 2003, a sector of the military, associated with Talpa, would have take power for few hours. Imagine further that Talpa fully supported the coup. And, to round up the simulation, imagine that prime minister Fortuin came back from exile in Italy two days later, and his democratic elected government was restored to power. Now. Would it be very undemocratic that the minister in charge of TV licenses would have not renewed the Talpa permission, when possible? Would you have not agreed with such a move?

Chavez is the head of an extremely incompetent and authoritarian government. There are many reasons to disagree with his policies. But hey, he has been repeatedly elected in reasonably democratic elections. Whether we like him or not, his is a valid government. And in this case, his opposer's have been proved extremely undemocratic. Can we seriously blame a government that do not renew the broadcast permission to a clearly putchist TV sender?

But hey, Chavez has some eight years as president, so there are many other cases to consider him as a dangerous politician, certainly an undemocratic. The most clear, at least for me, is their decision to deny official jobs to persons that supported a referendum against the government some years ago. Never you mind that the referendum was eventually won by the government. After this referendum was called by signatures collected in the street, the government allowed those names to be posted in internet (still online few weeks ago, the infamous Tascon list), and check every job application against this list. If your name was there, you would not get the job.

It is a bit depressing to see that so much noise is made of Chavez, most of the time by the wrong reasons.

circular migration indeed

Published: 28 May 2007, the independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2588985.ece

This is the latest snapshot from the killing seas of the southern Mediterranean, the stretch of water at the European Union's southern gate that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says "has become like the Wild West, where human life has no value any more and people are left to their fate".
(...)
Up to 10,000 people are believed to have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean from Africa. The passage from west Africa to the Canary Islands is no less perilous. In Spain, where shocking images of a dozen dead would-be migrants in their boat were published in newspapers last week, estimates of the total number of dead run as high as 7,000.

Utrecht goes RO

Two nights ago I attended the meeting of the groenlinks utrecht bestuur. We haven't seen each other in a while, so there was a busy agenda, with many interesting issues. Not really meaningful to walk through all of them, but for one exception... It looks like groenlinks utrecht is going Ruimtelijk Ordening!

Indeed, along the meeting several different issues ended in RO. Take for example our starting strategy for the beginselen discussie: in June 19 we are organizing a brainstorm on the groenlinks visie for big (dutch) cities. Indeed we have been thinking on what would be the way to bring the experience of utrecht localos to the national arena of the beginselen discussie, and after a proposal of Tjeerd, our vz, we will focus in what groenlinks think is a nice city. How can we plan it? What situations require immediate attention? is security? or is building of social houses? is it achterstand wijken? or is accessibility? This issues might find a place in a beginselen from groenlinks. After all, we are a urban party...

Then, later, we talk about alive issues in the local politics. And indeed, there is an interesting tension in between the city government (in which we have two aldermen) and our people in the city council. It looks like the city government goes for preserving the city as it is, and our councilors go for the building of new social housing. Surely another issue on Ruimtelijke Ordening.

And then, even later, we were informed that the new werkgroep from our afdeling, Ruimtelijke Ordening werkgroep that is, not only manage to recruit in couple of months a bunch of active members, but also counts with the participation of two of our city councillors! Which more or less guarantees that such a werkgroep will have a definitive influence in our politics.

And, if for the sake of the argument I would talk about the province now... it is important to notice that the person that was bestuur member and now is elected at the province, is Jasper Fastl... our expert in... Ruimtelijke Ordening.

So... are we going urban, or what?

Flexibility, GL cursus and beginselen

Yesterday Bart Snels was the guest of the cursus that the groenlinnks utrecht afdeling organized on our thinking. The organizators of this course, me among others, choose to call Bart not only due to his position as head of the Wetenschapelik Bureau, but also because his own motto for the party is that GL should be an ideenpartij. Who else should we have in a course on ideas of groenlinks?

Of course, Bart made an interesting plea for the flexibilization of the dutch economy. That argument, known to the ones that follow the groenlinks internal discussion, is a nice history to hear. Never you mind that apparently this tale goes against the feeling of the left. The central point of Bart is that a more dynamic economy will include more people in the labour market. And that, beyond doubts, is a goal of the left wing politics not only today, but since two centuries ago.

Critical points to this history are known. Some of mine can be read if scrolling down this blog (to be (liberal) or not to be: that is not the question). My central argument is that the excluded population is already flexible, so is hard to believe that further flexibilization could possibly help. But let's hold the discussion for once. What about segmented flexibilization?

The known example of this segmented flexibilization is a french proposal of around a year ago. The idea was to flexibilize contracts to young people and secure contracts to older workers. Not surprinsingly, this proposal brought demonstrations and chaos in the french debate. Quite unfair to keep young people without labor security, and reasure the old worker in his established position. Now, i wonder if segmented flexibilization is only possible in this way.

Imagine, the opposite case. Imagine that all jobs hold by persons over the 45 years are made flexible, and all jobs offered to persons under the 45 are made fixed. Would that not be precisely the sort of segmentation that has the best of two worlds?

The argument here is that an experienced worker actually does not profit from job security. If he (or she) is fired, with the cv that has accumulated in his working years, the finding of another work will not be too difficult. And precisely the newcomer to the labor market does need security, since to be fired without a builded up cv makes the search for a new job rather difficult. It is possible to imagine that the border should not be an age, but the number of holded jobs. After your third job, you have no rights any more to a fixed contract, would be another formulation of the same idea.

I suppose that this idea has many problems. After all, I am only an amateur economist, and not a professional. But so far it seems to me that this idea would precisely support newcomers, and bring dynamism to experienced workers.

Let's see who react -if anybody- to this post...

Vacatures Kleurrijk Platform

Webmanager

Het Kleurrijk Platform zoekt een gedreven webmanager. Kennis van de inhoudelijke thema's van het KP is gewenst, maar niet vereist. Affiniteit met Open Source Software is een pre. Onze webmanager verwerkt de input van onze leden op de site. Eventueel kan ook de hele site vernieuwd worden, in samenwerking met de werkgroep. Ons doel is om de website up to date te houden met inhoud, nieuws en diverse informatie van zowel de politiek als de maatschappelijke ontwikkelingen. Onze webmanager zit dus in het midden van enkele dynamische discussies. Wij vragen minimaal een dagdeel per week voor deze klus.


Contact manager, Tweede Kamer

Het huidige Kleurrijk Platform houdt onvoldoende contact met de dagelijkse politiek van landelijk groenlinks. In de laatste jaren hebben wij niet de stukken geproduceerd die het meest gewenst waren voor onze politici in Den Haag. Nu zoeken wij een gedreven en capabele persoon om “Den Haag” naar “Utrecht” te brengen. Deze contact manager volgt de agenda van onze fractieleden ten aanzien van onze thema's, en is aanwezig bij onze maandelijkse vergaderingen.


Contact Manager, Maatschappelijke organisaties

Als landelijke werkgroep van groenlinks, probeert het KP een levende communicatie houden tussen maatschappelijke organisaties en onze partij. De contactpersoon helpt deze doelstellingen met het maken van een databestand van Nederlandse organisaties, potentiële bondgenoten of gesprekspartners van groenlinks t.a.v. het multiculturele debat. In de eerste fase van dit project wordt informatie samengesteld van actieve en passieve leden van groenlinks.


Geïnteresseerd? kleurrijk@scicha.org!

Second meeting of the project 2008: Many questions and one answer

Last night was the second round of the project 2008. The three commissions meet, to finally start working. We sit all together for a while, and then apart. And as in any other starting meeting of groenlinks, many questions were posed. This time, very few questions were offered.

Few minutes after the plenary started, the air was already quite cluttered with doubts. Some of them:

1) Is the partijraad going to change this commission?
2) Do we write ourselves the program? or do we make other people write it?
3) What should we ask our members to do?
4) Must we write as well a change of statutes?
5) Are we going to discuss dilemmas? are we looking for a good ideological fight?
6) Are we going to discuss values? are we looking for a nice consensus?
7) Are werkgroepen going to get a role in the process? and if yes... a special role?
8) To whom are we going to report? partijraad? congress? partijbestuur?


As usual, very few of these questions got a clear answer. My guesses, after the discussion, are as follows: no, second, to write, probably not, if you want, ditto, yes, but not special, partijbestuur.

The problem is that some possible and even rational answers are a recipe for bad press. The commission would like to find an equilibrium in between being open, and being totally anarchic. So we do not want to decide what the discussions will be, but we want to signal some issues to discuss. And we know now that these commissions are under the partijbestuur command... not under the partijraad... so the partijraad actually has nothing more to say about us... or so the partijbestuur say (I agree, by the way... but what the partijraad thinks?)

In any case, this vague exchange of opinions finally ended, and one clear answer came. From now up to december 31 2007, 12 in the night, as many texts as possible should be produced and collected. That is the ultimate goal of this commission. If we do it by hook or by crook, it does not really matters. It does not matter if werkgroepen write, or persons. It does not matter if we convince some people to write about some issues, or if unasked texts are produced. The only thing that matters now is: spui babe, spui!

So for once, we might as well agree, and write.

So up to 2008: spuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiui!!!!!

Some for the beginselen

Tonight the beginselen commission meets, and I thought that what I am posting here might be relevant for the beginselen discussion. It is a text that I wrote a while ago for the forum of kritischer groenlinkser, but it was never discussed... so perhaps now...

Enjoy...


To be (liberal) or not to be: that is not the question

Inti Suarez
Bestuurlid GLUtrecht; vz Kleurrijk Platform

Foreword

Too many times have been said that after the German wall fall, we all became liberals. Groenlinks, perhaps too late, perhaps too early, caught up with the trend. Too fast because we have still too many sectors of our society in a position that further liberalism will only reduce their chances to access current levels of well-being. Or too late, as is written in the last De Helling, where we are told that the liberalism that groenlinks party-topers embrace today is as old as the Jacobine movement, back in the times of the French revolution.

Now, we might not have to choose in between the too late or the too early options. As Halsema repeated many times the past two years, the discussion about our supposed liberalism just misses the point. To be liberal today is a sticker so vague that can be used for the VVD or for Groenlinks, not to mention the democrats in the USA. The devil, as usual, is in the details. Lets have it about some details. In what follows I hope to show that groenlinks ideas on economy are far too liberal to be good, and groenlinks ideas on migration are far too conservative to be of relevance.

Nordic ideas

One issue in which the liberals of groenlinks have made headlines (at least in our internal discussions) is in the so-called Scandinavian model of economy. In such a model, basic tenets of the Dutch welfare state are attacked. The proposal calls for flexibility of the ontslagrecht, stronger reintegration investment and better networks of support for the unemployed. If this whole package would be implemented together, it does sound Ok. But is it Ok?

The most important claim that the Wetenschapelijk Bureau has done promoting this model is that it will create a dynamic economy. Dynamic here means that more people is fired faster, so others, traditionally excluded from the labour force, are capable to take the vacated jobs, so far unavailable to them. In the eyes of groenlinks ideologists, the people excluded from the labour market will profit from more flexibility. But how much of this is true?

In first place, let's define the analysis. There are many ways to classify the different components of a society. One could think in gender, or in ethnicity, or in education level. Or in a combination of those factors. Once the classification is decided, the next step is to explore the labour participation of each population segment. Labour exclusion does occur in every society group, but in some more than in others. With this results in mind, one could analyse the results of labour market flexibility in each particular segment.

Let's go step for step, then. Consider ethnic or gender segmentation. Simply comparing level of employment in autochtoon versus allochtoon (the analysis, at least in broad lines can be repeated for women) we learn right away that the allochtoon Netherlander is far less included in the Dutch labour market than the autochtoon segment. One conclusion of this is to say that labour exclusion is a relevant issue in the allochtoon population. So far, so good. In the program of groenlinks so much is acknowledge, since we claim that labour exclusion is a relevant issue, via discrimination, for the allochtoon citizen. Now, would flexibility help?

Now that we know who is excluded from the labour market, let's proceed. Is the allochtoon employee flexible? How would further flexibility of the labour market change their employability? The last report of the arbeisdinspectie1 tells us that allochtonen (and women) are very mobile segments of the labour force. So we discover that in reality, the allochtoon employee is more flexible than the autochtoon employee. Allochtonen change their jobs faster and more frequently than autochtonen. So the question arises: would further flexibility help this sector?

Let's put the argument together: One sector of the Dutch population, in which exclusion of the labour market is a relevant problem, occurs to be also a very flexible and dynamic sector. Dynamism is positively associated with exclusion, then. How more dynamism could possibly help the inclusion of this sector?

The example offered here illustrates a broader trend in groenlinks flavour of liberalism. The idea of dynamic economies as source of employment is theoretically sound, and it has been breached in many countries, principally in France. Now, what this trend has to do with the real excluded from the Dutch labour market? Not much. What the liberalism of groenlinks today misses is the rooting in the real conditions of the excluded labour force. Is the phenomenon due to olded employees that can not be fired? Do we really believe that if a relevant percentage of current employees would be fired then the excluded of the labour market will be -suddenly- included?

An alternative analysis of exclusion in the labour market goes along the lines of intrinsic -microeconomic- causes, instead of structural -macroeconomic- causes. The results of several studies hired by our TKfractie past years verify that, at least in regard to the allochtoon workforce, discrimination is a much more relevant cause of exclusion than lack of economical dynamism. But this line of thinking produces problems, as groenlinks well knows. Of course, what I am referring here is to the well known law Samen, which introduced by the Rosemuller fractie, was not renewed few years ago. Interesting is that such a law seems to go against what liberalism is. In a “laissez faire” state, there is no interest of the government for telling a business owner whom to hire. Perhaps attempts comparable to the law “Samen” fall out of the current liberal trend. In any case, this is not the place to attempt a revival of an old groenlinks idea. What I do intend to do here is to point at limitations of the current liberalism of groenlinks. Our own research, or data easily obtainable from the CBS and the Arbeidsinspectie tell us that exclusion is certainly not solved by more liberalism.


Free flow

Now, lets attempt another dilemma currently discussed in Europe, with have a classical liberal answer, and that has recently discussed by groenlinks. I would like to turn our attention to the migration dilemma that European societies face today.

The free flow of people across countries is a fundamental tenet of liberal ideology, as fundamental as the free flow of goods and capitals. Every classic (or neoclassic) economic theory function if and when markets are open. The interesting question is how good scores groenlinks here? Or Europa, for what it matters? Not very good, actually.

If we go back to the congress of Groenlinks occurred in R'dam, back in 2005, you will remember that a visietext migratie was there discussed and ultimately voted. In that text four dilemmas were presented to the groenlinksers. Migration in Europa today is an issue that sets dilemmas far from trivial. The commission that wrote the proposed visietext presented no full solutions to those problems, but ways to tackle them. Around a months ago, that is two years after the congress, our representants in the European parliament meet their collega's from the European Green Party in Berlin, in an attempt to settle a position on migration from the EGP. If you read what our Kathalijne brought to this meeting, it certainly goes along the lines that groenlinks set back in 2005. The emphasize is in circular migration. Faced with the increasing migration pressure, what Europe can offer as solution is a controlled circular migration scheme.

So far so good. We have a representant of groenlinks lobbying in the European political scene for the standpoints that we agree on. But to place this in the context of my discussion here, the question has to be made. How liberal is circular migration? Is circular migration a step in the direction of a world of open borders? Or at least to a world in which flows of people are as open as possible? Well, actually not. Circular migration schemes, actually, are very non liberal, or at least, very non open. The word circular means that the person that arrives and is welcome in Europe, does not stays but for a well defined amount of time. Actually, any scheme of circular migration requires a enforcing state, able to track foreign workers and able top deport them when their time is due. Surely not a very liberal state of affairs, neither a society to aim at.

Even if we take the ethical considerations apart, circular migrations schemes are known and have failed since long in Europe. What else is the good old idea of gastarbeider? What we know is that the circular part simply doesn't work. Or the guest part does not. A relevant amount of people that arrives to a place to work, stays. A circular migration scheme is bound to fail as a realistic alternative to the immigration pressure that Europe faces today.

So. The intention of the lines above is to clean up the start for the serious discussions that we need inside groenlinks today. My two examples aim to prevent our discussion to be phrased in terms of being, or notbeing, liberal. I hope to have presented two cases, both relevant in today's politics, in which groenlinks is too liberal, or too conservative. You might or might not agree with me about my own preferences. But let's agree that the questions that we have to answer is in the details, and not in the big lines.